Disney Planning A Reboot Of “Rocketeer”

Walt Disney Studios has begun development of “The Rocketeers,” a semi-sequel and semi-reboot of Joe Johnson’s 1991 action adventure film “The Rocketeer”. Max Winkler and Matt Spicer will pen the script which will be headlined by a black female character.

Based on the popular 1980s indie comic by Dave Stevens and a homage to the serials of the 1930s and 1940s, Billy Campbell starred in the original as Cliff Secord – a stunt pilot who discovers a rocket pack and becomes embroiled with mobsters and Nazis, as well as Howard Hughes and the FBI. Jennifer Connelly, Alan Arkin and Timothy Dalton also starred.

Brigham Taylor (“The Jungle Book”), Blake Griffin and Ryan Kalil will produce the new take which keeps the story in a period setting. Set six years after the original Rocketeer Cliff Secord has vanished, an unlikely new hero emerges – a young African–American female pilot, who takes up the mantle of Rocketeer.

She does so in an attempt to stop an ambitious and corrupt rocket scientist from stealing jet-pack technology in what could prove to be a turning point in the Cold War. The project is still in the very early stages though so no word on potential production dates.